The "New Text Document.txt" Incident

This happened last week during the IS [Information Security] practical. I think it's best to write this down now, while the memory is still fresh and the story isn't embellished at all.

The place - IS Lab, the 1st computer near the door.
The heroes - Sanjeev, Kalpesh and me.

Once again, as I had earlier mentioned on another blog, the B3 batch is THE BATCH from the great class of COEP Comp 2009. This incident couldn't have happened in any other batch.

So here's what happened:

It was the 1st IS prac post Mid-Sem and as usual no one had done the assignment on Steganography [which by the way had been given almost 2 weeks prior to Mid-Sem]. Anyways so here we are, the 3 musketeers sitting on one comp, whiling away time. Sanjeev and I almost had an arm wrestling match. I spent time researching on a female called Lena Soderberg who was a model whose photo was used as a test photo for all image processing work. Anyways I liked the photo and downloaded it to use as the image to be processed for our program which was thus far non-existent. We also downloaded a program which had like 28 header files and was a VC++ program. It had a demo which had shit like password protection and all to go with the steganography, one look at the damn thing and we knew it was so good that it was unusable. The Java program I had of Pranav didn't run, so again it was useless. So here we were an hour and a half into the prac with no concrete program. We did however for fun use Lena's photo with that 28 header program, which worked. So there we were with a desktop which had various icons including one with "New Text Document.txt" written on it and no program of ours. Things were going along fine until the M Tech sir showed up.

He comes along and asks us - Have you finished the program?
Now this question is a very plain and simple question. But somehow Sanjeev and I thought it was funny. We were both laughing, but we didn't laugh explicitly and we avoided looking at each other, because that would have made us lose control. Then Kalpesh was on his own, explaining to sir how our program was "almost complete". Some lines exchanged during the conversation were -

Kalpesh: We are still researching... the problem is that the transformation of the text is not happening... the program is not complete.

Finally after stalling for 10 minutes the M Tech finally said - Show me the program

Kalpesh - Sir, it's not complete

M Tech - Even then, whatever is done, show it to me

Kalpesh - But sir, it's not working fully

M Tech - You must have done some coding

Kalpesh - Of course [Sanjeev and I laughing really hard, in silent mode]

M Tech - Then show me whatever you have done

Kalpesh But it's not done fully

M Tech - Just show me you code

Kalpesh - Yes sir

Then he grabs the mouse. Sanjeev and I wonder what he will do. The mouse moves around icons on the desktop. M Tech - Where's your program. Kalpesh - Here. He double clicks on "New Text Document. txt". What opens up is this - our supposed program





Sanjeev and I burst out laughing, we were shamelessly loud in our laughing. Kalpesh too broke down and started laughing. Five minutes of continuous laughing from the 3 musketeers and then the M Tech starts laughing. After we got control he "warned" us about the assignment and how we must show it in the next practical. We all agreed. As soon as he went to the next comp, we all burst out laughing again. We laughed so hard, it was painful. Kalpesh even had tears rolling down his cheeks.

That was an amazing thing, which comes close to the "Passing the parcel incident" which took place between me and Amit Julka in the CL practical months back. Which I'll write about in another post.